Vegan bistro at former Hugo’s spot at Whizin Market

Fourth in a chain



Chef Mollie Engelhart Courtesy of Hope Rollins

Chef Mollie Engelhart Courtesy of Hope Rollins

Chef Mollie Engelhart has her hands full. The restaurateur is planning to open her fourth restaurant, Sage Vegan Bistro at Whizin Market Square, and is preparing the nursery at home for her third child.

“People joke I’m pregnant every time I open a restaurant,” Engelhart said. “I’ve done fire inspections with a 3-day-old baby in my arms. It’s not going to impact my ability to keep the restaurant open.”

The baby will be a bit older this time around. Her due date is in November, and she expects to have her Agoura Hills restaurant open in January. The new business will open in the corner space previously occupied by Hugo’s Restaurant, which closed last year.

Engelhart, 41, opened the first Sage Vegan Bistro in 2010 with her husband and business partner, Elias Sosa. The business is farm-to-table—that is, the food that’s served at Sage is grown at a farm owned by Engelhart or at one of a handful of other family-owned farms.

Engelhart said part of the inspiration behind her business is to get people to think about where the food they eat comes from.

“We have to be conscientious. We’re concerned about the centralized banking system, about other things becoming centralized, like healthcare,” Engelhart said. “Essentially our food system is becoming centralized. There are four big meat companies; agriculture is getting more and more consolidated, and we do have to be aware of that, just like we have to be aware of our healthcare or our banking or any of those things being centralized. I don’t think people see the food system getting consolidated the way it is.”

A resident of Fillmore, Engelhart has restaurants in Echo Park, Culver City and Pasadena. She had been looking to open a fourth when she was contacted by the Whizin property managers.

She said no to the initial offer, then came to visit and realized the area had a market she could tap into.

“I started doing research and went to some of the other vegan restaurants around here, and I saw there’s a pretty big (market) out here for what we’re doing,” Engelhart said. “I talked to some people who said they’d leave a yoga class to get tacos at Erewhon Market because there’s nowhere that’s a sit-down. They’d have to drive to L.A. to get vegan food and a cocktail.”

In addition to vegan foods, Sage offers organic cocktails and craft beer brewed from hops grown on one of the same farms that provide the restaurants with produce.

Bill Tucker, president of the Tucker Investment Group which owns the Whizin center, said it’s important that the marketplace feature unique tenants rather than chains that have name recognition. Engelhart said the focus on small business is part of the appeal of the market square.

“We’re trying to hand-select all the tenants that would come into the center, make sure they’re special. They did a call-out and they felt that Sage would be a good fit. Hugo’s had a vegetarian flair to it, but we’ve wanted to do something that still catered to the vegetarian or vegan—something that would be a special spot, and Sage fit the bill really well,” Tucker said.

He said there are still a few vacancies in the center that he hopes to fill with unique tenants.

In addition to rounding out the center’s retail and restaurant offerings, Tucker has been focusing on upgrading the center, which was originally built in the 1970s.

The Whizin arcade was remodeled with new skylights, water features and surface treatments in 2011. Tucker said the work is never really done.

“It’s always a work in progress. We’re now working on bringing some component of art to the center and upgrading the center from that standpoint,” he said. “From my vantage point, change is always a positive. It’s an evolution, and the center keeps getting better and better.”

Follow Ian Bradley on Twitter @Ian_ reports.